HOW THE ELECTIONS OF 2005 WERE STOLEN:

LINK TO REV HOVE'S ARTICLE ON THE RIGGING OF ELECTIONS!!!!

LINK TO THIS PARTICULAR ARTICLE!!!!

"What happened on Thursday night" :
An account of how ZANU PF rigged the Parliamentary Elections

Sokwanele Special Report: 5 April 2005

On Thursday last (March 31) a theft of breath-taking proportions took place in Zimbabwe. Stolen from the citizens of this land was their constitutional right to elect their own representatives to Parliament. So great was the scale of the national heist that effectively it took from the people the government of their choice and foisted upon them a government they did not want and had not voted for.

The Mugabe regime had been planning to rig the elections from the moment the date was announced – indeed from long before that, for this regime knows well enough it would be trounced by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party in any free and fair contest. So the preparations to rig the poll had to begin early. Without the months of careful preparation and total manipulation of the electoral process ZANU-PF knew it would face extinction in the poll.

But the purpose of this short piece is not to describe the months of cynical scheming, including the manipulation of the entire food delivery system and the cunning re-writing of the country's electoral laws, effectively to put Mugabe appointees in command, with the military to control it. That story has been told elsewhere (see our own "SADC Checklist" which reviewed the electoral and security legislation, and our weekly feature "Mauritius Watch" which chronicled events on the ground). Nor is it our purpose here to review the widespread and systematic abuses of the SADC election guidelines which occurred on the day of voting - such as the use of a supposedly indelible ink to mark the fingers of those who had voted, which it transpired could be easily removed by the application of a mild detergent. These abuses will no doubt be documented by others before too long.

No, our purpose here is to take our readers through the events of the evening and night following the poll, specifically between 7.00 pm when voting ended and 11.00 pm, for it was during these few hours that ZANU-PF's central rigging strategy was carried out. The plot was so cunning and audacious that the likes of John le Carre and P.D. James would have been proud to have written the script themselves.

It went something like this.

At 7.00 p.m. the polls closed and the presiding officers of each polling station were required to advise the total numbers of people who voted and of would-be voters turned away. A simple matter, and this information was conveyed by radio or telephone to the constituency office. By 7.30 p.m. most presiding officers around the country were ready and waiting to begin the count.

Then comes a mysterious intervention which interrupted the process. All presiding officers were instructed in very clear terms that they should not begin the count. They were to await specific authorisation from their superiors within the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) before proceeding with the count. Here was a clear signal that some skulduggery was being planned, though exactly what it was difficult for those outside the ZANU PF mafia to see immediately. Presiding officers in the majority of polling stations across the country, and those waiting with them to confirm the count, had to cool their heels awaiting further instructions. In some cases that further instruction from the command centre only came many hours later – in at least one instance as late as 2.00 am the following morning. The presiding officers became very impatient at the delays – which incidentally were in breach of the Electoral law. Remember, most of them had been on duty from 3.00 a.m. on the Thursday morning. Altogether they were not a happy lot. Whilst some were hand-picked by the regime from the military and the civil service for their known loyalty to and compliance with ZANU-PF, many of them it seems were not in on the full plot. Why the interminable delay?

The Mugabe regime had a very good reason for delaying the count in most stations. During this time they were conducting a sample survey of the voting patterns from a few selected polling stations. In these stations the count went ahead early (starting at 7.30 p.m.) and immediately the results were known they were conveyed by the presiding officers concerned to the constituency offices. Constituency offices manned by loyal ZANU PF cadres thereby afforded themselves a golden opportunity to consider voting trends – and respond. Where the sample results indicated a deficiency of ZANU PF votes – which, it transpired, was the case in the great majority of constituencies, the matter could be easily remedied. A simple calculation would indicate how many additional ballots were required for the losing ZANU-PF candidate. From that a decision how many additional ballots to be cast in each polling station, and the appropriate instructions were soon on their way to the compliant presiding officers – one phone call or radio message sufficient.

To understand how ZANU-PF could get away with this fraud one must appreciate how much of a disadvantage MDC election agents were at. At every polling station they were in a tiny minority compared to the police, the army, the presiding officer and his minions – all of whom were batting for the ruling party. Added to which their means of communication from the polling stations was poor at best and, as we shall see later, there were times when they were effectively cut off from the outside world altogether. The problems were grave enough for the MDC agents in urban constituencies: one can imagine how many times over the problems were compounded in remote rural areas.

Reports from around the country indicate that time and again the opposition representatives were hassled, restricted and frequently shut out of the polling stations altogether for significant periods of time. Quite enough time for the ZANU-PF team to take instructions from central command, write out additional ballots and slip them into the box. And at no time was the exclusion of MDC election agents from the polling stations more rigorously enforced than when the early "sample surveys" were being done. Some candidates themselves were excluded from participating in the count!

By 8.30 p.m. or thereabouts the sample survey had been completed – and one can imagine the alarm bells it set ringing for ZANU-PF! The MDC was set for a comprehensive victory. ZANU-PF was not slow to respond. They had the figures and knew roughly how many additional ballots were required to turn each defeat into victory for their candidates – except in those urban constituencies in which the MDC had such a massive lead and ability to prevent ballot stuffing that it would have been impossible to stage a ZANU-PF win without stretching credibility well beyond breaking point.

If one asks where the additional ZANU-PF ballots appeared from the answer is quite simple. Presiding officers had access to spare ballot papers. The voters' roll has over a million "ghost" voters on it so there were plenty of names left that could be crossed off. A ballot could be completed, a "ghost" name struck off the register, and when the MDC polling agent was either looking the other way or physically removed from the station, a whole bunch of ZANU-PF ballots dropped in the box.

The national heist was proceeding smoothly and according to plan. There were, it is true, a number of irate MDC polling agents, and complaints of irregularities were sure to follow – but these could be dealt with in the partisan electoral courts in due course. All but the most conscientious foreign election observers were already tucked up in bed in their comfortable hotel bedrooms. It seemed that ZANU-PF could not lose - literally. Except for one unforeseen glitch, which, unfortunately for them, gave the whole game away.

On state television and radio the not-very-bright agents of the Electoral Commission had started to read out the initial results coming in from the constituencies. For each constituency the number of votes cast and the number turned away, was announced. Not yet the final tally for the parties, but just the total of votes cast. At one point the senior ZEC representative said that the results given represented the position at 7.30 p.m. – that is 30 minutes after the close of the polls. He got as far as reading out the results for 72 of the 120 constituencies when, inexplicably, he stopped – almost in mid sentence. No further results were ever again announced of votes cast.

It is known that a message was relayed nationally over police radio ordering the announcement of the voting figures be stopped, immediately.

Someone in ZEC / ZANU-PF had realized the fatal damage they were doing to their own elaborate plan to rig the vote. They had already given out too much information. All the MDC had to do for those 72 constituencies for which the total number of votes had been announced was a very simple calculation to arrive at the truth.

The compromised counting procedures continued across the country once the presiding officers were authorised to proceed. In most cases the count did not take long, because on average there were only a few hundred ballots to count at each polling station. The results were conveyed by radio or phone to constituency offices, and thence to the National Logistics Committee in Harare for a final number crunch by Robert Mugabe's closest allies and partners in crime, headed by Tobias Mudede, the infamous Registrar-General of Voters who had already delivered two stolen elections to his master.

Meanwhile back in the polling stations the presiding officers held hostage all the MDC representatives present, to ensure that they did not interrupt the smooth flow of the ZANU PF master-plan. In very many instances (precise figures will no doubt follow) MDC agents were locked up after the count for several hours, and they were banned from using cell phones and all other means of communication. Unlawful imprisonment to add to the catalogue of crimes committed by and for the ruling party that night. (Not to mention the blatant violation of Section 64 (2) of the Electoral Act committed by all presiding officers who failed to post the results of the count in each polling station on public view).

But back to the one single serious blunder which provided clear and irrefutable evidence of ZANU-PF's perfidy – the announcement of the total of all votes cast in 72 constituencies by 7.30 pm. Once the ZEC had completed their reading of all the results, giving the "official" numbers of votes for both main parties, the MDC could ascertain, by a simple calculation, the true number of votes cast for each candidate and the number of ZANU PF votes stuffed in the ballot boxes in each one of the 72 constituencies.

MDC had the following information for these constituencies (all ZEC's own figures):

(1) The total number of votes cast

(2) The number of votes for their candidate (working on the safe assumption that ZEC would not increase the number of ballots cast in favour of the MDC)

(3) The number of votes said to belong to ZANU-PF.

Accepting (1) and (2) as true figures, subtract (2) from (1) and you have the true number of votes for ZANU-PF – which in most cases was considerably lower than (3). The difference between this (true) ZANU-PF number of votes and (3) represents the number of bogus votes stuffed in the ballot boxes by compliant presiding officers.

The fraud is out, and for all to see. There can be no denying that ZANU-PF have been caught red-handed. To which we can add that, using this windfall information and the results declared for MDC, it is possible to calculate by a simple matter of arithmetic, that the absolute minimum of seats actually won by the opposition is 62. Again we would emphasise that this is the most careful and conservative figure and represents the absolute minimum of seats secured by the MDC. Yet even the figure of 62 seats proves two simple facts of enormous significance:

(1) ZANU-PF did not obtain the two thirds majority in parliament they crave and worked so hard – and so dishonestly - to obtain, and
(2) MDC secured the majority of the popular vote which was their target – 62 seats(minimum) out of 120 contested seats.

We await with interest ZANU-PF's response to this exposure and, with almost as much interest, a comment from the SADC and South African government observer teams, which have already pronounced the elections as free and fair

 

NO WAR IN ZIM.....SO WHY THE NUMEROUS REFUGEES???

<div>PLEASE DOUBLE CLICK ON THE VIDEO AND WATCH THE TRAGEDY OF REFUGEES FLEEING THE CRISIS AT HOME!!! ITS TRUE MBEKI THAT THERE IS NO WAR IN ZIM BUT WHAT THEN IS THERE???

No war in Zimbabwe?????

Watch the video 'An account of the exodus of a nation's people'   ...read further

 

"PUSH OUT THAT DICTATOR NOW!!!" ISAAC DZIYA!!!

SOURCE!!!

      
Written by Isaac Dziya

   
Saturday, 07 July 2007 

 

Why wait for elections?

 

As reliably as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so it will be for the Zanu (PF) leadership when the whole country will rise up and say "We Do Not Need You!!!!", thanks to strong barbaric tactics that have impoverished our once fantastic country, the predictable freedom surge in our people is coming sooner than late. The leadership forgets like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand, that the 4 million children of Zimbabwe in the Diaspora have linkages with people back home, who are equally affected with what is going on in the country.

The time for tyrannical Communist rule is over! For an 83-year-old man to be excited that he will stand for re-election next year is completely absurd, very ignorant, and very, very uncultured! Is Robert Mugabe the only person in ZANU (PF) who has the mantra and monopoly to rule both his party and the country? If Robert were to die today, would Zimbabwe's ZANU (PF) or Zimbabwe be obliterated from the face of the earth? Come on, all you intelligent people, no one should have a monopoly of knowledge and a monopoly of the right to rule people forever, that was only for kingdoms, and not democracies.

 We need the break! 

We know that Morgan Tsvangirai will not be fooled this time; that ZANU (PF) will not rig elections and murder more people in its quest to safeguard the continued one sided plunder of the nation's resources in the bid to pacify the ever hungry cronies. It is truly depressing and saddening at the same time. We know that the pressure of the 2010 World Cup is on Mbeki, rather than the need to see the democratization of Zimbabwe as a push for him. The joke will be on Comrade Thabo Mbeki if he does not use his mettle to solve the crisis in the neighbouring Zimbabwe. He should not think back to the days when the Zimbabwe government incarcerated him during his liberation struggle. That should not be a stumbling block; he has no need to repay the liberation struggle gains with the suffering of the Zimbabwe populace at large.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (Matibili) is a practicing Catholic Christian, or is it for convenience? The irony of it all is that his second name is derived from one of God's most revered angel, and sadly he does not live up to that names sake calling of beauty and protection, but rather is causing untold mayhem, death and destruction of the very people he is supposed to be serving. Mr Matibili needs to be dealt with in a firm and consistent manner. He needs to know that people know that he is deceptive, selfish and in need of help and that his time as president of the once promising young nation is up.

It is no longer a secret that there are no medicines in our clinics and hospitals today. Need we belabour the point? Most medical professionals have fled the impoverishment of their qualifications into other well accommodating countries. Fresh investors and tourists are now a pipe dream, and a thing of the past. Notwithstanding the threat to nationalize the companies, how can these guys who have a skill in destroying a once prosperous country ever imagine that they can run farms and businesses? 

If they say they will bring Chinese investors, well and good, but can they control their immigration, seeing they failed to protect the Warren Park families during the construction of the National stadium? Textbooks are now a pipedream for most schools today; non-governmental organizations that could help are now being castigated in the very English language of the people that Robert casts his diatribes at every time he opens his senile mouth. Mugabe must no longer speak in English, if everything west reviles him!

I continue to lament for the estimated 4 million Zimbabwean adults now living in exile outside Zimbabwe who have been ingeniously been disenfranchised by the incumbent government. I applaud the colleagues who have had the guts and audacity to take that government to the Zimbabwe Supreme Court. This process must be taken further to International Courts, the African Court of Human Rights or the international one in the Hague to claim our voting right. It is good for international observers to be present to monitor the elections, but that would not go down well with most of us if we do get the chance to cast our God given right to vote for our own candidates.

The elections should be free and fair, but will they be? Most of the eligible 18 year olds are being systematically disenfranchised by not having the national identity cards and or the passports due to the paucity of foreign currency which is being piled into the loss making Air Zimbabwe.I have as of the 7th July spoken to a fellow MBA colleague in Zimbabwe, who advises that he can not find meat, cooking oil or other things needed to survive in the shops. In fact he went down to butchery in Rezernde Street only to find vegetables and tomatoes on display. That was for two days running. He laughs at the hardships as if they were a luxury. The plot is lost. The phone is then unplugged by the CIO goons.

Sad and sick people! Can they unplug the misery in the people's minds? Can they intimidate those of our brothers left standing guard in the country? The answers will come sooner than late. Do we need to wait for elections to oust this illegitimate government? Arise people of Zimbabwe and demonstrate against this oppression.The businesses will definitely shut down. How can a person of five senses force a person in business to lower their price by half for a product that they bought for more than the price they are being asked to sell it for? This is utter madness. The final nail is here! He must exercise this madness on the businesses run by Kaukonde in the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

 

Isaac Dziya, MDC Activist

 

i.dziya@sky.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it mobile 077 1961 8637 telephone: 0121 429 5332
 
Last Updated ( Sunday, 08 July 2007 ) 

 

 

Peace and Tranquility???

Peace and Tranquility???

 Cell in RSA: 0791463039

 

Mugabe under siege: a failed ideology or conspiracy!!!

By Mutumwa D. Mawere

Last updated: 07/09/2007 00:49:07

LINK!!!!

THE events of last week in Zimbabwe expose how notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, and of a development state that are all elements which are valued and cherished by all progressive Africans can be rendered irrelevant in the pursuit and sustenance of absolute political power.


Zimbabwe’s judiciary, legal system, bureaucracy and police are all great institutions derived from the colonial state that should have been of service to Zimbabwe but unfortunately they now seem to be privatised and partisan.

After 27 years of independence, one would have expected that the idea of Zimbabwe as enshrined in the Constitution, with its emphasis on the principles of democracy, the rule of law, above all, the equality of all citizens irrespective of social standing, ethnicity and race would by now have had deep roots in the nation’s culture and contemporary civilisation.

It appears that the ideas associated with the age of enlightenment that has visited many former colonial countries (newly industrialised countries) have failed to influence Zimbabwe’s political establishment to see the futility of pursuing misguided policies and programs.

The Zimbabwean constitution should have remained a testimony to the enduring interplay between what is essentially Zimbabwean but is very British in its intellectual heritage. The realisation of Zimbabwe (by no other leader than Mugabe) as an inclusive and plural society at independence should have drawn from the best of both traditions.

It is evident starting from the Matabeleland massacres, the Willowgate scandal, the Executive Presidency, agriculture, and now mining and industry that the experiment of building a democracy within the framework of a mixed economy, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-party society has failed in Zimbabwe. Instead of encouraging Zimbabweans to walk the path of democracy and move to a new dispensation free of poverty, ignorance, intolerance, disease and the threat of state tyranny, Zimbabwe’s founding fathers seem determined to undermine the interests that inform any progressive nation.

The journey that Zimbabwe was supposed to travel under the stewardship of its founding fathers was expected to be an exciting journey full of challenges and opportunities. The restoration of sovereignty to the people of Zimbabwe at independence was surely meant to ensure that citizens would never again be victims of their own creation i.e. the post colonial Republic.

I am sure that many Zimbabweans had no contemplation that exercising their democratic choices would be classified as treasonable acts and anyone advocating regime change would be viewed as less patriotic than incumbents.

At a time when Zimbabwe was expected to teach the world about the new African civilisation based on tolerance, the country has now become an example of how countries should not be governed. In fact, Zimbabwe and the UK were expected to learn from each other and teach the world how former adversaries can mutually cooperate in an increasingly inter-dependent and globalised world that we live in. However, the big picture that is emerging in Zimbabwe is extremely negative and corrosive.

The business climate is negative. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and other events of the late 1980s and early 1990s may have proved to countries like India and Vietnam once and for all that capitalism was a better system than socialism/communism, but it appears that these events did nothing to settle the debate about which model is best suited to Zimbabwe.

At the time of India’s independence, the UK government was socialist and there was widespread belief like in Zimbabwe that the state could bring greater prosperity to the working people and the wider population if it controlled the means of production. We now know that after many attempts around the globe, that governments are not actually good at running anything or protecting the interests of the vulnerable and poor. In the UK, it took about 30 years (or 3 years less than Mugabe’s rule) before the winter of discontent and a realisation that there was a better way of running a country.

In the case of India, the economy only started to grow positively in the early 1990s as it became evident that the communist experiment was a monumental disaster.

It seems that the government of Zimbabwe is determined to arrest the entrepreneurial spirit of Zimbabweans and throw the country into darkness by uprooting the remaining diminishing points of light.

Instead of supporting the private sector, the government of Zimbabwe has now targeted this sector for political expediency and ensuring that the results of the 2008 elections are predetermined. Although the government is busy trying to convince itself that the enemy is from without, it is clear that the current economic meltdown is largely self created.

Bad policies can never be expected to produce positive outcomes. It is easy to blame Blair and Bush but the experience in India and China has shown that progressive nations can leverage their social strengths into economic gains and the dream of a better life for our grandchildren and children can be realised within a lifetime.

Having been the first business victim of the misguided policies of nationalisation based on trumped up allegations of externalisation, I often wondered whether the Zimbabwean business sector was smart enough to know that the day of reckoning was around the corner. It is clear that the government needs someone to blame and any point of light (performing assets) is naturally a target.

While the land reform was justified on the basis of sovereignty and righting a colonial wrong, the nationalisation of economic assets is being justified on the presumed regime change conspiracy. What is being argued by the government of Zimbabwe is that anyone who increases prices is aiding and abetting the imperialist inspired regime change agenda. Based on this logic, it is clear that if Zimbabweans voted for another party in 2008, it is unlikely that Zanu PF will consider that to be their genuine expression.

Zimbabwe needs its government activities at all levels to become known for efficiency, integrity, meritocracy and transparency. This requires new and strong leadership to achieve. For the past 27 years, Zimbabwe has failed to produce such leadership and the scale of the challenge is such that no one in Zanu PF is up to the task. It is now apparent that even Gideon Gono is now running scared and disowning the misguided policies and programs (remember Project Sunrise and the Zero Sum Game).

It is clear that Zanu PF will not accept that at the core of the Zimbabwean problem is policy bankruptcy and lack of leadership. However, from a national perspective it is important that Zimbabweans bite the bullet and have the courage to say: “enough is enough”.

Even if the so-called sanctions were to be lifted, command policies have been discredited and any interventionist strategy is unlikely to deliver the change that Zimbabwe urgently needs.

President Mugabe has the full backing of his party to do the wrong things confirming the deep seated nature of the crisis and injury. Zanu PF believes that the bureaucrats and securocrats are the best custodians of sovereignty without any empirical evidence that such is the case.

To use an old economic example: although there may be a superficial benefit in using one team of bureaucrats to harass businesspeople, it is clearly better if the money being paid to such “policemen” is used to pay people who can make a greater contribution to development.

If the government keeps too many people on its payroll (price inspectors with the active support of war veterans), then the taxes it has to raise to pay them will not be available to the already overstretched consumers and companies to use on their own more productive purchases.

The Zimbabwean economy, like a deck of cards, is crumbling fast and yet the cause of the problem appears to be a contested issue requiring a critical analysis of the record of the post-independence in a holistic manner. Conspiracy theories are normally good raw materials for failed states and can conveniently give life support to terminally sick patients.

Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column appears on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can contact him at: mmawere@ahccouncil.com
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